Lead Designer and Director Shouzo Kaga left Nintendo to start his own company where he went on to create Emblem Saga/Tear Ring Saga for the PSX and Berwick Saga for the PlayStation 2. Purportedly there was a Fire Emblem being developed for the Nintendo 64 DD, which never materialized. Fan speculation, however, holds that some of the game's story and/or core mechanics may have transferred to the GBA title, due to an early beta screenshot of two characters who are not to be found in the actual game, and the 64DD game's working title, "Maiden in the Darkness," an epitaph given to a certain late-game character in this game.

As far as gameplay goes, Fūin no Tsurugi ("Sword of Seals") feels like a watered-down successor of Thracia 776. The graphics have been shrunk down and brightened quite a bit, undoubtedly to make it easier to see on the original Game Boy Advance screen, but otherwise the visuals are pretty similar. Although unit death is still permanent, a huge drop in difficulty makes the game feel considerably more mass market compatible than predecessors. This isn't entirely surprising, seeing how the franchise really painted itself into the obscurity corner by staying on the Super Famicom.

The most notable improvement of previous features that Fūin no Tsurugi brings to the table is multiple support conversations between characters. Rather than lovers and siblings being the only means of raising chances of critical hits and other bonuses between friendly units, characters that fight in adjacent squares can have support conversations, which serve to give the units more personality and explore back story. They also gain more stats as they fight with each other. The magic system has also been reworked to better integrate the light and dark spell types.

This is a new chapter in the Fire Emblem saga, with no direct relations to the previous games. 1000 years ago, humans fought Manaketes (the humanoids that can turn into dragons). The war came to an end when the demon dragon by the name of Idoun was sealed. The land of Bern has gathered an army in a bid to take over the entire continent of Elibe. A new hero named Roy gathers an army to free his home land and the rest of the world from the tyranny of King Zephiel. One of the coolest moments of the game is when Roy finally obtains the Sword of Seals and manages to decimate a whole army with it alone. There are a few bonus maps afterwards that let you mess around with this immense power.

Characters

Roy

Roy is the son of Eliwood, the main character of the first Fire Emblem game to get officially translated into English. Yet Roy himself was the first Fire Emblem hero to officially appear in the West, as he was featured in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Lilina

This perky mage is the daughter of Hector, the Marquis of Ostia. She's a childhood friend of Roy's.

Zephiel

Bern's tyrannical king, hellbent on taking over the continent. He poisoned his father to ascend the throne faster and uses dubious means to gain power. To think he was such a cute, sweet little kid when the English speaking world first met him!

Guinevere

Zephiel's younger sister and not a big fan of his plans.

The gameplay of Fire Emblem 6 is, on the whole, a step back from the epic, large-scale nature of Fire Emblem 4 and the utterly frantic nature of Thracia 776, back to the slightly smaller scales of Marth's saga (where the series has mostly remained ever since). The number of characters allowed to be brought into each mission varies depending on the chapter, but the number never ventures far beyond 15, and the objective for every mission is nearly always to simply seize the enemy castle at the end of the map. Item management is also handled now by a peddler named Merlinus, who functions as a unit driving a wagon with absolutely no combat abilities. He's somewhat of a pain to keep out of harm's way, but is absolutely essential if you want to be able to manage your vast inventory of weapons.

Perhaps realizing that the core gameplay was not quite as deep or expansive as the later SNES installments, Nintendo put in a number of features designed to encourage multiple playthroughs. In addition to the game having several alternate versions of a few levels (depending on which members of your party are better-leveled at the time), the game also boasted three endings and post-game bonuses such as trial maps and unlockable secret characters. The characters included, among others, Eliwood and Hector (although American gamers who played the sequel first might find to their dismay that the characters do not resemble their younger Lord-counterparts, but are merely a Paladin and a General, respectively), Zephiel, and Guinivere - the latter requires a full nine playthroughs to unlock.

Rekka no Ken ("Blazing Sword") takes place several years before its predecessor and tells the story of Roy's father Eliwood and Lilina's father Hector. Both men have their own quests in the game after playing through the first 10 chapters as Lyn. Players start out going through Eliwood's quest, but should they decide to replay the game, they can choose to play as Hector, whose campaign is considerably longer, has different maps and has a wider cast of characters.

The gameplay in Rekka no Ken doesn't bring any remarkable change from Fūin no Tsurugi. Its main achievement is being the first game in the Fire Emblem franchise to be officially released outside of Japan, simply dubbed Fire Emblem, without any subtitles. For once, the English speaking masses would be able to purchase a Fire Emblem game in stores.

The thief, a staple of the Fire Emblem series, has long been somewhat of a nuisance, due to his necessity in the team as a chest looter, lockpick, and, well, thief. In addition to being a traditional member of the team, he has also been, traditionally, unable to promote, resulting in a unit that is largely inadequate to engage in combat past mid-game (not that many thieves were exactly excellent combat units to begin with). This has been rectified here with the inclusion of a promotion for the Thief class, the Assassin. In exchange for giving up the ability to steal, the Thief now gets the opportunity to develop stats for another 20 levels, as well as the ability to perform an instant-kill attack (dubbed 'OHKO' or one-hit K.O. by fans prior to the official naming 'Silencer' in Fire Emblem 8), activating roughly half as often as a normal critical hit.

Merlinus appears in the game as well, but since this takes place a number of years before the events of the previous game, he does not yet have a wagon, and instead spends most of the game as a stationary tent placed on a random tile of the map. He nonetheless requires protection, as units will often try to attack the tent if they see no other easy target, but for every level you decide to bring him he will gain one level, greatly increasing his ability to dodge, although how an entire tent manages to dodge an attack is never really explained...

Possibly in trying to appeal to Western gamers, Fire Emblem 7 is the first and only game in the series in which the player is not simply assumed to be the Lord and main character, but is instead a non-combatant named Mark (although the player can change the name), who serves as the army's tactician. The integration of the Tactician into the story is on the whole rather sloppy, as characters will sometimes turn towards the camera and address the player, particularly during the game's prologue and epilogue, but for about 90% of the game the characters converse purely amongst themselves, meaning the player/Tactician is either not present or is eavesdropping and staring awkwardly at them. There's also a 'Tactician bonus' given to characters who share the same affinity as the Tactician (in addition to being asked for a name, the player is also prompted for a birth date, which determines this affinity), but the bonus is largely negligible, and the 'Tactician' character altogether feels like a poor attempt at 'pulling the player in'. Coupled with the fact that Lyn's tutorial mode is unskippable on first playthrough, the game received its share of criticism from Fire Emblem purists.

The main story is rather clich#&233;, but it does a good job of supporting the game and giving purpose to all the characters. The evil lord Nergal wants to open the Dragon's Gate - a portal to the realm where the Manaketes were sealed. He has powerful human-like creations called "Morphs" aiding him by creating chaos in the world. Again, it's the characters that make the plot feel worthwhile. Many family members of other units in Fūin no Tsurugi appear again. When playing the games in in-universe chronological order, Fire Emblem 6 takes on a noticeably darker tone, bearing in mind the characters of Fire Emblem 7 and their assumed fates, given the opening events of Fire Emblem 6.

Characters

Eliwood

Roy's father and your typical big-hearted, albeit somewhat dimwitted hero. Wields a sword and a sense of justice.

Hector

The hot headed Ostian Lord who swings a mean axe. He's tough, he's brash and has a biting sense of humor.

Lyn

Supposedly the last of the Lorca tribe, but she's really a noble of Caelin. Lyn's chapter is basically a tutorial to familiarize gamers with the mechanics of Fire Emblem, thus this whole section will be a breeze for veterans.

Nergal

The main bad guy. Always gotta have one of these, don't ya?

Trial maps and unlockable characters from are absent here, Nintendo probably supposing that three separate character quests and unlockable hard modes for each would suffice. The game also includes a multiplayer battle arena, in which players can construct a team of five characters and pit them against either computer controlled teams or against fellow players via the link cable. It also continued Fire Emblem 6's inclusion of an unlockable Sound Room and Support Room, where one could read all of the various support conversations between characters that had been unlocked.

In an attempt to boost either Fire Emblem sales or Mario Kart sales, those who pre-ordered Mario Kart: Double Dash were given a bonus disk that contained, among other things, a set of exclusive bonus items that could be transferred from the GameCube to the Fire Emblem GBA cart, and then given to the party on any given playthrough. The items ranged from stat-boosting relics to special weapons, although none of them were particularly useful, other than that they tended to last longer than most weapons. Their translation was also noticeably rushed, as the item descriptions contained several typos and glitches. Transferring from the bonus disk also unlocked two songs in the sound room, both of which were remixes from older Fire Emblem games.

The game was released in the US with minimal changes. The final level was made slightly easier (the doors housing the bosses open at a slower rate, giving the player more time to take two out before another two approach), and the Dragon Riders were renamed "Wyvern Riders". This was likely to avoid confusion, as a major plot point of the game centers on reviving the ancient race of the Dragons (which are evidently not the same, tame dragons of which Nergal has a dozen battalions' full). The game was also released in Europe, where a few characters' names were inexplicably changed. The game also had a post-credit ending sequence, attempting to foreshadow the events of Fūin no Tsurugi and further tie the two games together. This remained in the US version, but was removed from the European version.

This watered-down Fire Emblem Gaiden clone hit the GBA shortly after Rekka no Ken and it shows. With numerous bugs and typos (even in the Japanese version), this game was horribly rushed to market. This installment of the Fire Emblem series was also released in North America, giving the world its first taste of Fire Emblem Gaiden's over world map exploration, extra monster battles, level grinding, branching class changes, and multiple main characters. In addition to being given more freedom over how your characters progress, there are three "Trainee" characters, very obviously meant to resemble Gaiden's villagers, who can traverse the lance-wielding, axe-wielding, and mage trees, respectively. It's nice to see some of the forgotten elements revisited in a more modern framework. Sacred Stones built upon class-exclusive skills as well.

Unfortunately, only four 'skills' exist in the game, and most of them are useless. The Assassin's "Silencer" skill was already present in the last game, making its new classification as a 'skill' redundant; the Sniper's 'Sure Shot' skill ensures that his next attack will hit, which would be great if Snipers didn't already have insane accuracy to begin with; the Generals possess a 'Great Shield' ability which occasionally renders them invulnerable for a turn (again, what would be a great skill on pretty much anyone but a General, considering they usually don't take much damage anyway); Pierce (essentially Holyn's Moonlight Hit from Fire Emblem 4), a Wyvern Knight skill, voids the enemy's defense stat and does direct damage, and is actually useful. But Pierce also has a chance of causing a game-breaking glitch if you happen to pierce when using a long-range weapon. Disappointments aside, Sacred Stones is still worth playing, and worthy of the Fire Emblem name.

As for the story - an ancient evil was sealed away with the power of 5 powerful stones. The Grado Empire seeks to collect and destroy these stones which have kept evil at bay. Twins Eirika and Ephraim are twin heirs to the throne of Renais, both of whom have separate quests at first. After the Empire of Grado suddenly attacks Renais, the king orders Seth, one of his most trusted generals, to get his daughter Eirika to safety.

Characters

Eirika

Your typical, kind-hearted Princess who doesn't like to fight. She eventually meets up with her brother, although the two spend much of the game along different paths. She spends most of the game under the protection of the game's pre-promoted Paladin, Seth. In battle she's more or less a carbon-copy of Lyndis.

Ephraim

Eirika's twin-brother and supreme badass. He shares his twin sister's noble heart, but holds much less compunction about fighting. Ephraim holds the distinction of being the first Lord (and first playable character since Fire Emblem Gaiden, really) to be an unmounted Lance-user.

Lyon

Prince of Grado and childhood friend of Eirika and Ephraim. Lyon possesses Eirika's same reluctance to fight, albeit to an even greater extent, and although kind is a rather lonely character. He becomes more important as the game progresses, eventually becoming the game's antagonist.

Although the rest of the cast feels somewhat stiff, the three main characters are unusually fleshed out. Lyon is Nintendo's attempt at making a sympathetic villain, giving him a Suikoden 3-like motivation, and for the most part it works pretty well, although he could have afforded to have a bit more screen time. There are also some issues regarding his character and who's-in-control-of-whom that are never quite ironed out.

The game has none of the trial maps that Fūin no Tsurugi had, although it has a similar post-game extra in the form of the Tower and the Ruins, both optional, multi-level dungeons filled with monsters which can be completed to unlock secret characters. The difficulty of the Ruins is substantially higher than than the main quest, possibly to help compensate for how mind-numbingly easy the game is. Not surprisingly, however, the Ruins don't really come off as difficult so much as simply tedious; the enemies still don't provide your maxed out team with much of a challenge, they just take hours to clear out. The Link Arena from Rekka no Ken also makes a return, as does the staple Sound Room and Support Conversation Viewer.

So far, The Sacred Stones has the distinction of being the sole self-contained Fire Emblem game in the series, with no sequels or prequels linked to it.